Rich Fink

Rich Fink is executive vice president and a member of the board of directors of Koch Industries, Inc. (since at least 1989), in Washington, D.C. Through his involvement in Koch, its free-market foundations, and various associated free-market think tanks, Fink is an influential, background player in free-market policy lobbying.

Since the 1980s, Fink has advocated a theory of "Ideological Entrepeneurship", or "Political Marketing", for selling free-market ideology to the public. Using Friedrich Hayek's models of the production process, he shows that to influence policy, you must first develop the intellectual "raw materials"; then develop these into policy "products"; and finally "market" and "distribute" them to "consumers". On this basis, Fink argues that conservative grantmakers should invest in three areas: university programs, think tanks, and implementation groups. Specifically through this line of argument, Fink has been credited with a major influence over the grant-making strategies of conservative foundations since the 1990s. 

During his time as an academic at Rutgers University (where he instigated an undergraduate program in Austrian economics), Fink was on the editorial board of the Austrian Economics Newsletter. For this involvement, he has been also been credited with a role in the revival of Austrian Economics during the 1970s. While at Rutgers, Fink also founded the Center for Market Processes.

In 1981 he moved to become assistant professor of economics at George Mason University, where he started another undergraduate program in Austrian economics (with Karen Vaughn). He took the Center for Market Processes with him (the CMP subsequently went on to become the heavily Koch-funded Mercatus Center, of which Fink is Director).

Fink left George Mason in 1984 to become president and CEO of the new, Koch-funded think-tank, Citizens for a Sound Economy, but returned in an executive role to head a capital campaign feasibility study, as executive vice president of University Advancement and Planning. 

In 1993 Citizens for a Sound Economy spearheaded a campaign to stop President Clinton's proposed energy tax: "Our belief is that the tax, over time, may have destroyed our business," Fink, who had now left CSE, told The Wichita Eagle. While the Koch Foundations could not legally lobby against the tax, Citizens for a Sound Economy rallied public opposition, especially in Oklahoma, where then-Senator David Boren agreed to help kill it. 

Positions held

 * Trustee and former president of two Koch Family Foundations, the Charles G. Koch and Claude R. Lambe foundations
 * Founder (1984) and former president, Citizens for a Sound Economy
 * Founder, Center for Market Processes (now part the Mercatus Center)
 * Director, Mercatus Center
 * Board member, Progressive Policy Institute
 * Board member, Institute for Humane Studies
 * Board member, Center for the Study of Public Choice
 * Economics Faculty member, George Mason University, 1980 - 1986
 * Executive vice president for advancement and planning, George Mason University, 1989-90
 * Board of Visitors, George Mason University
 * Vice Chair of the Faculty and Academic Standards Committee, George Mason University
 * Student Affairs Committee, George Mason University
 * Board member, George Mason University Foundation